


Day 15

by Maze316



Category: Don't Starve (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Gen, Graphic Description, Surgery, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:01:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24392482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maze316/pseuds/Maze316
Summary: They have every hour of the next fifteen days memorized. Different places, but the same chain of events. Wilson the Gentleman Scientist thinks he knows how to solve the problem by now. This time is when it really matters.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 18





	Day 15

They each took turns leading the group. Round and round, like hands of a clock, with every hour, they swapped. They no longer looked up to the sun. Lead kept an eye forward. Port-side watched the back. Starboard drew the map. Stern, when they were lucky, carried provisions and received treats from the back too. It was a few cycles since they found the eyebone, however. Their eyes glazed over even the blood red orb sticking out of the ground. It was not food or gold or a monster. Nothing else mattered.

Their belts clinked with twigs fastened to their belts. Tally mark scars had been dug in. Each one had 13. With six eyes, they no longer had to be quiet. Even their pale, flawless skin had healed impossible scars.

“We should make camp,” said one of the three. Winona shifted her backpack on her shoulders.

“We have daylight left,” said the lead. Wilson’s beard itched him.

“She’s right, Higgsbury. We should rest,” Wickerbottom agreed.

“Funny, coming from you,” Wilson observed.

“You know better than to be smart with me, boy,” Wickerbottom said over her map.

“Fine. We’ll stop at the end of the hour. That still gives us time before dark.”

“Thank you,” Wickerbottom said.

Winona almost took lead by the end of it. With a gentle nudge, she was coaxed off the path to make camp.

“I still failed to recognize any landmarks,” Wickerbottom reported over the fire. “I’m grateful this one didn’t have that collection of ponds. I still hear frogs in the night.”

“Let me see,” Winona said, waving for the map. “I have a good feeling this time. Lots of rocks and lots of nitre!”

“How are you feeling, love?” Wickerbottom asked.

“I’m fine, grams. I still have a day or so. Even ate lunch today!” Winona grinned proudly.

“Good to hear. You’ll need every calorie you can get.”

Wilson silently carved another mark into his stick. Tomorrow: Day 15.

The rest was a blur. It always was.

Hour 1. Wake up. Eat breakfast.

Hour 2. Get on the trail.

Hour 3. Walk.

Hour 4. Walk.

Hour 5. Lunch. Winona never eats.

Hour 6. Walk.

Hour 7. She slows down.

Hour 8. They remake camp.

Hour 9. None of the other hours matter. None of the other days. Wilson stands with a mandrake in his hands.

“Lucky we found that, huh, Percy?” Winona asked.

“Very lucky,” he deadpanned back.

“That one time we didn’t? Whoo, I’m glad I passed out real quick.”

“Winona, love, tone it down with the jokes,” Wickerbottom scolded. She hunched over a campfire. Flint ends of tools glowed red.

“Laughing is the only thing that distracts from the pain,” Winona stated. “Other than my lucky stick, that is.” She held up a small branch indented with the marks of her teeth. “Thanks, stick.”

“Ready for the mandrake?” Wilson asked.

“Oh, yeah, yeah, just one second. Grams! Don’t let my sister visit me tonight, she’s never been very good with blood.” She snickered. “Okay, Percy, hand it over.” Her breath caught in her throat as she bent forward. “I’ll see you on Day 16, big boy. See ya, Grams!” She bit into the root with unfounded enthusiasm. She grimaced against the taste as she chewed. She chewed slower and slower as the energy seemed to drain from her face. Within minutes, she became a stranger to the waking world.

“Ready, Higgsbury?” Wickerbottom asked.

“Are we ever?”

“A little optimism wouldn’t hurt, you know. If only to lift your spirits.”

“It’ll lift my spirits when this is over.”

“Deep breaths, Higgsbury.”

Wilson took a deep breath. He pulled the gloves from his hands finger by finger. Winona had already done the curtesy of readying herself. Her shirt was pulled up to just reveal her abdomen. Wilson could see her stomach rise and fall with her breathing. Calm. Oblivious.

“The glands,” Wickerbottom offered. She knew that they could ferment alcohol within 15 days, but Wilson knew it would not have enough alcohol concentration to sterilize. They used the next best thing under the circumstances: spider glands.

Hour 10: Surgery.

Wickerbottom offered him a rudimentary scalpel. Sharpened as far as the flint could allow, out of the fire just long enough to cool. Wilson’s hand was steady as he took it.

“Right lower abdominal corner,” Wilson said.

“Your left, her right,” Wickerbottom said.

Wilson checked his hands: her left, her right. He cut the air above it once before his blade pierced the skin.

“Cauterize,” Wilson said.

“Cauterizer,” Wickerbottom echoed. A red-hot rock, carried between flint, followed the cut. Blood couldn’t find the time to pool out before the rock was pressed into the incision. Wickerbottom turned her head away. The sizzling flesh seared like bacon, and, frankly, smelled like it. Burning flesh seasoned with metal — it was enough to make a grown woman heave.

Wilson’s iron stomach held firm. The incisions became smaller and smaller with practice. Maybe this one was a little too small, but he remembered what he should see. The appendix was hard to miss when it was so inflamed. Fevered, angry infestation. He cut through layers of fat and muscle. Another round of cauterizing. There it was.

“You’re doing fine,” Wickerbottom whispered.

“Don’t jinx me.”

He half blindly pulled the appendix. He cut through the fine membrane around it; small drops of red swelled at its edges. Not enough to worry about. With a tight grip, he pulled the swollen organ through her skin. He looked at it for a moment, and even Wickerbottom, drying his forehead, stopped for a moment to stare. A small, inflamed package which ticked like a bomb.

“Silk,” Wilson requested.

She handed over delicate thread, threaded between an expertly craved hound’s tooth. With his left hand, he held the organ tight enough to leave four tiny crescent moons in his palm. With his right, he pierced the thin flesh between the appendix and the rest of her. Every time, it sent shivers down his spine. His steady hand did not waver.

He had to suture the organ twice. Between the seams, he would cut. The flesh wriggled in his hands as he worked. Periodically, Wickerbottom checked her pulse and dried his head. They worked in silence.

“Okay, I think I’m ready to cut,” Wilson murmured, as if the very vibrations of his voice would disturb them.

“She’s doing fine,” Wickerbottom assured.

“It’s getting dark.”

“The campfire is well stocked.”

“Do you have a torch? And a new scalpel?”

Under the dim, orange light of the flame, Wilson cut effortlessly though the lines between life and death.

It was out.

“Brilliant job, Wilson,” Wickerbottom said. “Now, close her up.”

“What do I — What do I do with it?”

“She’ll want to see it, I presume. I’ll take it.”

Wilson handed over the seeping organ. Wickerbottom folded it up in fresh bundling wrap. “Don’t dilly dally, now,” she warned.

Wilson pulled his hands away from her abdomen. “I know, I—” From his visceral-covered hands, the piece of flint slipped. The perfectly tuned clock in his head ran slow. He watched in perfect clarity as the blade tumbled and lodged itself in the very side of her abdomen.

“Wickerbottom!” he cried. His hands flailed wildly. She dropped the bundle and rushed to his side. Blood leaked from the wound like sap.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she said. “It’s not bleeding too badly. Focus on suturing your incision.”

“But she’s bleeding—”

“Suture your incision, Higgsbury.”

“Do you have more silk?”

His hands shook for the first time.

“I can’t — I can’t do it. You’ll have to do it for me.”

“I don’t know if I can stomach it.”

“You have to.”

His trembling hands passed her the needle. Wickerbottom frowned, but she looked down upon the wound with determination. “I’ve sewn for 50 years,” she said. “This should be no different.”

Wilson hoped they had enough silk.

A half moon illuminated the last hours of their procedure. Wilson watched the blood clot around the scalpel as he kept fire duty.

“You did wonderfully. I’m very proud. Don’t let that slip up get you down.”

Wilson didn’t respond.

“She’ll be fine.”

Silence.

“I know you won’t let yourself relax until she’s all sewn up. I understand. But, Higgsbury — _Higgsbury!”_ Her glasses flashed a reflection of the fire. “The fire!”

Wilson looked behind him to see two tendrilled hands sneak toward the fire. He jumped. He sprinted toward the closest, making it vanish in the night.

“Deep breaths, Higgsbury!”

As he returned, the fire was all but stolen away by the second hand.

“The fire, stoke the fire!” Wickerbottom snapped.

“Where are the logs?”

“Anything! Throw in anything!”

Wickerbottom was on her last stitch when the world went dark.

\- - -  


“Day 1 again? Ah, I feel like I need a nap. Takes a lot out of all of us, eh?” Winona awoke to her companions as despondent as always. Something, however, felt different this time.

“I give up,” Wilson said. “We’re never going to get out of this place.”

“Higgsbury, you did it,” Wickerbottom said. “You completed a successful appendectomy! We were so close!”

“Ah, you got it this time? Good job! What happened?” Winona asked.

“It doesn’t matter if I can,” Wilson said, ignoring his patient. “They’re never going to let us do it. We’re going to relive these next fifteen days for the rest of eternity.”

“You cannot give up hope,” Wickerbottom said.

“Hope? What hope do we have? Even if we save Winona, even if it works, even if she doesn’t die of infection, even if something doesn’t kill us off between now and then, what? What then? We wander this place for fifteen hundred days? Fifteen years?” He threw up his hands.

“There’s no alternative. We live, or we die again.”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Winona waved for their attention. “What happened? What’s got you so upset?”

Wickerbottom stared at her shoes.

“Even your sister doesn’t want you to survive, Winona,” Wilson said.

“Charlie? She…?”

Wilson nodded.

“Oh. Oh. But, we got each other, right? We can take her on!”

“Well, you two have good luck with that. I’d suggest you eat some fiber and enjoy yourself, Winona.”

“Higgsbury, you can’t just—” Wickerbottom held out an arm in front of Winona. Winona stopped, desperation in her eyes.

“He’ll come back, love.” Wickerbottom said. “I promise. He’ll come back.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know if there are any tags you want me to add for trigger warnings!


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